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Soon after I figured out how to voice control my media centre, I realised that I needed an easier way to trigger it. The trigger would set the volume of my media centre to a level I could naturally talk over, so I could navigate around it using my voice. I was using the 0 button of my remote control for this task, so I still needed to keep my remote control in hand. There was very little to be gained by the voice control if I were to still continue using traditional remotes to trigger it. I only needed the one button as all other commands were given by voice. I needed a one button infrared (IR) remote. The only remotes I could find commercially were for garage doors or car alarms, but these did not use IR technology, so I had to make my own.

Four months have passed since I started working on this project and I have succeeded in getting it working, though aesthetic improvements will still need to be made. I have been enjoying tinkering with it. This is a very simple device compared to many other electronic projects, so someone with experience may have it going in a few hours.

While I was making my gadget, I discovered that it would be capable of doing far more than just enabling the voice control of the home theatre PC. What I made was a very simple tool. A single button that I could point at any computer or robot around the house, to let it know I needed it to start listening to me. This could ultimately mean that I would have a portable button combined with my voice to control any electrical device in my house. The more I think about it, the more likely this is to become a reality, in time.

I have come up with a number of other methods to trigger the voice control systems in my house. I will explain these solutions over the coming weeks, months and (hopefully) years. If these future solutions end up being inadequate, my gadget will become a necessary accessory. The need to carry something around the house with us all the time is a bit of hassle, no matter it’s size and ease of use. I want to be able to trigger the technology with empty hands, hence why I want to avoid using my gadget. One thing is for sure, we do need something to trigger voice control in high noise areas. A computer needs to know if we are talking to it or another family member.

This article will explain how I have gone about making my gadget. While my gadget does currently work reliably, it is at this stage only a proven working prototype. These instructions will show you two possible methods you can use to make it. The first method is simple to get going, and I recommend this option for anyone who wants fast results without too many complications. The second method will achieve the same result, but will allow you to investigate IR technology in more depth. I have not played around with circuit design much yet, but the information in this article should give you enough to start playing around with your own design if you so choose.

All of my future articles will somehow be related to my gadget – a single button to control everything. Much of this is about changing or using current, past and future technology to make my gadget be more useful. I know that it will work as I am currently using the one button approach to control a few things around my house, and I am enjoying the benefits of the technology.

I have been interested in the voice control of computers for a long time. My first attempt was around 10 years ago, and I had some success with it. In the right environment, I was able to say commands to my computer and it would respond based on what I said. The problem was that I didn’t have a practical use for it yet. It was clear in this early testing that using a keyboard and mouse was far more convenient, reliable and a quicker option than using voice. It will remain that way for many of the standard interactions (i.e email, facebook) we have with computers, at least in the short term.

The day Microsoft Kinect was launched in Australia, I saw the promotional video showing people waving their arms around to navigate through their media centre. It seemed to me that this would be a fairly unreliable and exhausting way to control anything, apart from games specifically designed for the technology. I was way too lazy to consider using this technology into the future.

I concluded that voice is the simplest way to control anything, and that it always will be. This led me to start playing around with voice control again. I ran through the voice tutorials and was able to get the computer to understand my voice some of the time. It did stuff up on me a whole lot, but it was clearly much more reliable than software I had used in the past.

Now around 6 months on, I have written an AutoHotkey script and a WSR macro that interact with Windows Media Center and Windows Speech Recognition software, allowing my media centre to be controlled completely by voice. This is a practical use for voice control. I can navigate faster with my voice than I can with a remote control. Instead of needing to know which button to press on my remote (or remotes), I simply speak my mind. I no longer use a remote at all. This is something I have wanted for a long time and I am excited about this outcome.

This system far exceeds any other voice control setup on the market today in terms of reliability and practicality. Most of the problems as to why systems haven’t worked in the past has not been because the software was inadequate for the task, (the software has worked fine for many years). Most of the problems are environmental, and my solution tackles these environmental issues. Rather than trying to make technology that works in our environment, my solution changes the environment to enable the technology to work. I believe it is inevitable that all future voice control systems will need to take this approach for the system to work.

This article will give you all the information you need to control your Windows Media Center home theatre PC with your voice. I will provide the easy to edit scripts and show you how to install them on your PC. I will also explain what works and what doesn’t, as well as explaining why previous attempts have not been successful. The more I explain how it all works, the easier it will be for you to set it up and get it working reliably. This will not be as easy as installing the software and having the results you want right away. You will need to train it to recognise your voice, and you will need to learn the correct commands to make. A solution that can understand the whole English language is a long way off. It is much more difficult to synthesize human understanding than it is for a computer to understand dictation. That is why we need to have set commands.

There is a video of my home theatre PC running this system after the jump.